I too once gave my small son a penknife; children should get used to risk. And I’m fully on Bear’s side. No matter that he is an old Etonian. To my mind, he is an inspirational figure. This is a chap who had a less than glorious academic career, crushed three vertebrae in a parachuting accident and was told he was going to have to work in an office all his life. At which point (I am collapsing the story somewhat) he decided to fulfil his childhood dream by climbing Everest. He went and asked all his great Etonian-honed contacts for money. No joy. He persisted. He found a weeny firm called Everest (not the window people). He promised, in return for sponsorship, to hold their sign up on top of the mountain. He went off, reached the summit, held the sign up. When he came home, he earned his money talking in village halls about Everest, and was spotted by the son of a TV executive. After which, Bear the Celebrity Adventurer was born via the unlikely route of an advert for Sure deodorant.
As Chief Scout, he visits Scouts across the country (particularly in grim areas) via helicopter, encouraging them to go camping, use knives, learn how to scuba dive, start a dance group – anything really, as long as it fulfils the Scouting maxim of Adventure. Forget the Duchess of Cambridge; its Bear Grylls who has really made Scouting sexy, and who has encouraged thousands of teenagers to have a go piling up crates in some deeply unpromising muddy field, or learning how to canoe, bike ride, or build a camp fire and sit around it singing. People might point at Bear and accuse him of having all the fun, thanks to a posh background and a famous school, but this is not the case. I think his confidence stems more from a sort of unstoppable enthusiasm and conviction not to give up, born very probably from being encouraged to use a knife from a very young age. Furthermore, unlike many people of note who pull the ladder of privilege up after them, Bear is unusual in that he dangles it out of his helicopter, and encourages young people to leap up there with him.

How many feminists does it take to relaunch a magazine? None, it seems. I was excited when I heard that the radical feminist magazine Spare Rib was going to be relaunched with the respected journalist Charlotte Raven at the helm. Not just as a magazine, either, but also as a ‘campaigning grassroots movement’, which presumably means a website and digital sharing etc, all impossible back in the 70’s when Rosie Boycott and Marsha Rowe had their big idea.Raven contacted Boycott and Rowe and told them about HER big idea. They were both “entirely supportive” (Boycott) and “very positive” (Rowe), writes Raven. But The Sisterhood is not a many-splendoured thing of female encouragement. It tends to be a horrid bitch-fest. And when she found out that the name Spare Rib was untrademarked, Raven should have acted. Because on June 3, 20 years after its closure, Marsha Rowe decided, in her infinite variety and wisdom, to trademark it.

Raven, (who inter alia, has recently discovered she is suffering from the incurable and degenerative neurological disorder Huntingdon’s Disease, and who has spoken movingly about how the relaunch was helping her look forward in a positive way), was served a writ from Rowe’s lawyers who threatened her with legal action, including an injunction, if she used the name Spare Rib.

According to a statement from Raven, widely circulated on Twitter, what really stuck in Rowe’s (and presumably Boycott’s) craw was the ‘grassroots movement’ character of 21st Century Rib. Well boo-hoo. So nobody was online back in the medieval era of the 1970’s. So what? Rowe and Boycott have, it seems, dumped their original support, in favour of legal action which would of course squander the financial resources of the new magazine.

In their defence, they said they were seeking answers about the business plan. “We wanted to know how it was going to be funded,” Boycott has said. Rowe claims the trademark is a red herring as they owned the public lending rights, and had been told that any attempt to use the name without permission would be treated as ‘passing off’. “Women gave blood sweat and tears for that [name]” Rowe said.

Raven has since decided to abandon the relaunch, and will simply start a feminist magazine/movement with a new name. Does this matter? Not really. It makes me laugh (in a hollow way), that the row is centred on feminist expression, which should be championing the female ability to work in the world. It moves on from what Spare Rib was. But maybe that’s a good thing. Perhaps the notion of ‘The Sisterhood’, which never really worked, needs to be replaced by a more general encouragement of working women who are already beset by issues such as lower pay rates and anxieties about ageism and parenting. Who don’t necessarily feel themselves as politicised, but would just like to get on in life. Who feel anxious about calling themselves a ‘feminist’.

I don’t know Charlotte Raven, but I wish her luck in her new venture. Anyone who has a good idea for a new title should contact her on sparerib.nationbuilder.com/makingachange.

This is the extraordinary flower arrangement at the villa of Princess Hetti, who married Arndt von Bohm, the sole heir to the Krups steel fortune. She and Arndt were given a palace outside Marrakech which was Party Central during the Sixties and Seventies…Hetti was wont to wander around the garden the morning after her fancy dos, finding the likes of Andy Warhol still lying amid the palm trees. It is a complete confection of Austro-Hungarian oil paintings, Moroccan decor and, er, kitsch (white unicorns, spouting horses on fountains etc). It’s now looked after by a dear housekeeper who brought us mint tea and cakes as Only You played softly in the garden. It can be yours for 3.5 million Euros.